reading an application's manifest file?

Question

Is there an easy way to read an application's already embedded manifest file?

I was thinking along the lines of an alternate data stream?

Answer 1

Windows manifest files are Win32 resources. In other words, they're embedded towards the end of the EXE or DLL. You can use LoadLibraryEx, FindResource, LoadResource and LockResource to load the embedded resource.

Here's a simple example that extracts its own manifest...

BOOL CALLBACK EnumResourceNameCallback(HMODULE hModule, LPCTSTR lpType,
    LPWSTR lpName, LONG_PTR lParam)
{
    HRSRC hResInfo = FindResource(hModule, lpName, lpType);
    DWORD cbResource = SizeofResource(hModule, hResInfo);

    HGLOBAL hResData = LoadResource(hModule, hResInfo);
    const BYTE *pResource = (const BYTE *)LockResource(hResData);

    TCHAR filename[MAX_PATH];
    if (IS_INTRESOURCE(lpName))
        _stprintf_s(filename, _T("#%d.manifest"), lpName);
    else
        _stprintf_s(filename, _T("%s.manifest"), lpName);

    FILE *f = _tfopen(filename, _T("wb"));
    fwrite(pResource, cbResource, 1, f);
    fclose(f);

    UnlockResource(hResData);
    FreeResource(hResData);

    return TRUE;   // Keep going
}

int _tmain(int argc, _TCHAR* argv[])
{
    const TCHAR *pszFileName = argv[0];

    HMODULE hModule = LoadLibraryEx(pszFileName, NULL, LOAD_LIBRARY_AS_DATAFILE);
    EnumResourceNames(hModule, RT_MANIFEST, EnumResourceNameCallback, NULL);
    FreeLibrary(hModule);
    return 0;
}

Alternatively, you can use MT.EXE from the Windows SDK:

>mt -inputresource:dll_with_manifest.dll;#1 -out:extracted.manifest